What can you do with your law degree?

“You should go to law school, it’s always useful!”. We’ve probably all heard this kind of saying, times and times over. But when we think of law students, we immediately see them as future lawyers, or maybe as jurists in corporations... and that’s about it. So, what can one actually do with a law degree?

 

The short answer is: a lot of different things. First of all, regarding justice itself, a law graduate can become a lawyer after a three-years internship, and thus either join an existing law office, or create his very own one. Regardless, one can also decide to specialize in a specific field, such as criminal law or family law. Up to some point, one might even attempt to become magistrate.

Law graduates can also work in organisations. Whether they be for-profit or non-profit, they all need jurists to work in very diverse departments: negotiating and writing contracts, managing litigations, taxation, wealth management, ... In this day and age, jurists are a must-have pretty much everywhere.

Last of all, law graduates can work in the public sector. Here again, they face many possibilities: working for a politician, or in a federal, provincial or communal administration, to name a few. Whether one counsels the authorities or a politician, or writes decrees or administrative circulars, his law degree shall once again allow one to choose from a wide range of possibilities.

A wide range of possibilities indeed, but it comes at a price. One needs to define quite early what fields of law he most enjoys and prepare just as early one’s professional project. This is inevitable, as many of the examples we’ve just seen require some form of specialization, which often occurs while still in law school. The good news is that you will definitely find your dream job wherever your favorite law field and what you would like your carrier to look like cross paths.

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